The No-Star

In a northern capital the light is rationed. The capital is near but recedes.

A traveler waking in a no-star motel re-boots from not knowing if he’s who where

or when. And proceeds, in a white hire car. In his jacket pocket a map of its bodywork

detailing three tiny chips in the paint; a contract giving comprehensive cover,

unraveling in the unread smallprint. Whiteness is his leitmotif. Snow-light

filtered through a blind; the dirty whiteness of last night’s driven through snow;

a tight ream of paper unwritten on. An intricately unique star of ice-mote

splintering to dissolve on eye and screen. The slow sound carried by oaks and elders—

white noise of the green world he’s imagined speaking to him, in season, of life at the rim.

Somewhere at the roadside a spill of oil, uselessly composing fossil rainbow.